Google is serious about the security of its Chrome browser. Google is so serious, in fact, that it’s willing to offer bounties on any bugs that are discovered on its popular browser.

Today, Google’s Chrome team announced that it had paid out another large sum to a ‘bug hunter’ – an independent PC user who has discovered a bug within Chrome’s code. In cases where the bugs pose a serious security threat to the operating system, Google pays $5,000 or more to each bug hunter.

The most recent bug involved corruption in Windows kernel memory. The bug was found by two programmers at Documill, and the reward was $5,000. Interestingly enough, this bug wasn’t specific to Google Chrome. Instead, it was a Windows bug that had the potential to affect aspects of Chrome. In other words, Google is paying several thousand dollars to fix bugs in a rival operating system.

While Google’s Chrome team has paid up to $10,000 to bug hunters in the past, all of the bugs were directly related to problems in Google’s source code. This is the first time Google’s Chrome team has paid someone for identifying a bug in Windows.

Google commented on the issue by stating:

“Occasionally, we issue special rewards for bugs outside of Chrome, particularly where the bug is very severe and/or we are able to partially work around the issue.”

Do you think you can outsmart Google’s programmers and identify a security flaw within Chrome? Get started. Remember: just like bounty hunting, the more dangerous the problem is, the more you will be paid. In this current release of Chrome alone (Chrome 22), Google has already paid out $29,500 in bounties.